Amal Dutta: Tryst with India's finest thinker of the beautiful game

Amal Dutta

As the taxi entered a narrow strip off Baguihati near Teghoria in east Calcutta, I kept on asking the passersby and multiple roadside vendors about Amal Dutta, India’s first professional coach.

“Go ahead, you’ll find his home just opposite to a football ground,” said one shop-owner.

House No. T85. Here resides the Euclid of Indian football. He is 83 but Amalda is quite active to talk about anything from Rabindranath Tagore to falling standard of the game in the state and India.

Dutta was born at Jorasanko in north Calcutta in 1920 in a family who stayed just opposite to Rabindranath Tagore’s iconic house.

“As a kid I used to see him keep an eye on us from his balcony while we made frantic efforts to use their open space for football,” he reminscinents.

Though his memory has become a little weak, he still talks about the deplorable standard of Indian football and blamed the officials for making a mockery of the game which hasn’t yet achieved full professional status in the country.

“When I coached the Calcutta clubs, I used to see players look at their watches. Most of them were employed either in banks or in some companies. There can be one thing at one time. Either you play football as a professional or work elsewhere,” he explained.

Dutta understands the drawback of Indian football. But he doesn’t want to offer any remedial measures and neither is he interested anymore. And I believe it’s not worth because those who’re running the show won’t understand his importance and ideas, as they never respected him as a thinker of the modern game.

A competent midfielder with East Bengal in the 1950s, he represented India in the 1954 Asian Games at Manila. After his playing career was over, he went to England for a one-year FA coaching course, where he was taught by the renowned Walter Winterbottom.

“The entrance test was difficult as I had to go through a set of physiology questions. Thankfully, I was a student of physiology and it helped in the end.”

“Football is not only about the game. You need to understand the human body. The joints, the cartilages, heart, liver, kidney functions,” he added.

While he spoke about his England sojourn, a middle-aged man, who drives auto-rickshaw in his area, entered the room.

“Amalda, I hurt my knee and it’s troubling me for the last few days,” he said.

Dutta, with all his experience as someone who also chipped in as a part-time physician, touched his knee and nodded his head.

“I guessed it right. There’s a jerk in the inner cartilage. But there’s nothing to worry. Just apply cold and hot water treatment and use a knee cap.”

I wondered with so much knowledge, both in football and physiology, why he was not used properly in the Indian football setup. He was not treated as a professional while he kept on saying Indian football must professionalise its set-up if they want to compete with the top Asian nations.

Actually, in our system we don’t really care for those who’re educated and have a broad-based knowledge.

A refreshingly innovative coach, famed for his tactical innovations, Dutta was recognised as the finest thinker of the game in India and which many felt was ahead of his time. In the early 1960s, he broke a Bengali middle-class dream of a secure government job when he quit Indian Railways to become a full-time coach.

He explained his socialist thinking in a simple way, through football language.

His ‘Diamond System’ with Mohun Bagan in 1997 made him even more famous, and he earned respect for being a genuine thinker of formations and football ideologies.

“I derived the idea from Total Football. I believe, in a family if everybody contributes with some earnings, a big family will not only grow, it will be strengthened. You just can’t depend on the earnings of just one or two to run your family,” he explained.

“Ditto with a football team, the same philosophy can be applied,” he added.

I was impressed once again and salute to the man who will always be remembered for his genuine service for the betterment of the game in our country.